Philistine vs. Curmudgeon

Regardless of your opinion on Web 2.0, I know this much: It’s brought back meaningful philosophical debate to a tech scene that’s been mired in money and greed for far too long.

On one side the digital believers are arguing that interactive, community sites are changing society for the better, creating a more democratic world for the exchange of ideas. This side’s big thinkers include: Chris Messina, Jeff Jarvis, both Chris Andersons.

On the flip, you have the contrarians, or elitists, who argue that now that everyone’s a pundit, blogger, podcaster or vlogger, the value of knowledge and expertise has been lost. This side’s big thinkers include: Andrew Keen, Nicholas Carr.

Blog Daddy Jeff Jarvis

Nicholas, aka “Kid Curmudgeon,” Carr

Well, we had a good little dust-up on the philosophical front lines today, replete with name-calling no less, with Jarvis and Carr tangling on their respective blogs.

It started with Mr. Jarvis posting an item last Friday titled, “The book is dead. Long live the book.” His argument boiled down:

Books are frozen in time without the means of being updated and corrected. They have no link to related knowledge, debates, and sources. They create, at best, a one-way relationship with a reader. And, of course, the Internet can fix all of that.

Enter Mr. Carr, an acknowledged curmudgeon who casts a leery eye on all this new age techno-mumbo-jumbo. His satiric response, ironically posted on his blog, went something like this:

Gee whiz. I used to kind of like books. I liked that they were “frozen in time” and couldn’t be “updated and corrected.” I liked how they created a “one-way relationship” with me, the reader. I never found them to be cut off from “related knowledge, debates, and sources.” In fact, I often found that words were at their most alive when they found their way through a writer’s pen into print. What a nincompoop I was.

And all of this was precipitated by a Kevin Kelly piece (paid archive) in the New York Times Magazine earlier this month in which the famed proponent of the “long boom” lauded Google’s book-scanning project as the modern, democratic equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. To which John Updike responded in kind, and so on and so on.

I’m telling you, a scorecard would help in this growing mess.

But in all seriousness, it’s always fun to watch intellectuals spar, but the underpinnings of this debate go to the core of modern philosophical debate. Do we believe in mob rule, where any and all group discussion is an improvement, as the digital utopians do? Or do we celebrate the artist, the expert and the author as cultural beacons?

Jarvis says: Print is where words go to die.

Carr says: The web is where culture goes to die.

So, c’mon people now, let’s hash this out right here and now. Are you a philistine or a curmudgeon? Or something altogether else?